Is Twitter Slowing Down?

Most everyone has heard the word Facebook, but what about Twitter? Is Twitter slowing down?

Other than recent celebrity feuds or millionaires’ feelings about poor customer service, Twitter isn’t making headlines like Facebook anymore. The large amount of newsworthy information about Facebook has begun to question Twitter’s popularity. Some experts believe the lack of news is due to Twitter’s declining popularity. According to the article, “Is Twitter Slowing Down?,” by John D. Sutter, a recent survey suggests that “only 8% of online Americans check their Twitter feeds on an average day.” Although the numbers of users has increased to more than 140 million and the number of tweets surpasses 3 billion every three days, it’s safe to say that the vast majority of social media users are actively using their Facebook accounts instead of Twitter.

But what’s the difference? Users can share their photos and opinions on both social media networks. Sutter also suggests that Twitter is becoming more of a news source for users and Facebook is where people go to connect with friends and socialize. Is Twitter slowing down and really struggling with losing market share to Facebook, or does Twitter just need to be in the news regularly to be deemed popular? It just depends who you ask.

A Forbes writer described the dichotomy — that Twitter seems essential to some forms of communication but, apparently, isn’t all that mainstream — in this way:

“Twitter is growing in all sorts of ways: in the number of tweets sent per day, in the ad revenue it’s taking in, in the number of celebrities and brands using it in ways they quickly come to regret. But in terms of the overall proportion of the population engaging with the social messaging service, it might be in a bit of a lull.”

User numbers also tell the story of Facebook’s rise and Twitter’s relative stagnation.

Facebook says it has 901 million active users at this point, and the site is widely expected to cross the 1 billion mark this year. Twitter, meanwhile, says it has 140 million monthly active users. The site went through meteoric growth in its early years. But it’s been six years since Twitter launched, and by some metrics that growth appears to have slowed.

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